A California Highway Patrol officer stands guard at Ninth Street and Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles as smoke rises from a fire further down the street, April 30, 1992. It was the second day of unrest in Los Angeles following the acquittal of four Los Angeles police officers in the Rodney King beating case. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)

In Los Angeles–City Where the Third World Lives Next to Billionaire Enclaves™–the county has signaled that it plans to extend Wuhan virus lockdowns well into August.

As LA Mayor Eric Garcetti (For President 2024!) tried to explain, the extension doesn’t necessarily mean that everything will remain closed for the duration. Garcetti told the locked-down:

I want to reassure people, because I think there was a lot of panic suddenly when the headline said we’re all going to stay exactly how we are for three more months, when that’s not the case. I think, quite simply, think that she [LA County Health Director Barbara Ferrer] is saying we’re not going to fully reopen Los Angeles or probably anywhere in America without any protections or any health orders in the next three months. I think we know it’s probably going to be longer than three months. And as I’ve said a million times, we’re not moving past COVID-19, we’re learning to live with it. We’re not going to go back to pre-COVID-19 life anytime soon or just forward to post-COVID-19 time, until there is a medicine or a vaccine that allows that.

Talk about a born leader! Don’t you feel reassured? But even partial restrictions and stay-at-home orders will take a terrible toll on the Los Angeles economy. Think about it: do YOU want to go to a restaurant while you are treated like a Typhoid Mary? Do you want to go shopping when it feels like a trip to the DMV? The economic pressure on low-income residents will continue to ratchet up.

No doubt Garcetti and California Governor Gavin Newson (For President 2024!) will go begging for cash distributions from the feds. Not to worry: the handouts will quell unrest, because California and Los Angeles governments are REALLY competent and efficient at addressing residents’ needs. (You can tell by the potholes everywhere in LA, the ones that feel like you are driving through the rougher parts of Afghanistan.)

But seriously: Is Los Angeles heading for civil unrest? Might Angelenos see a reprise of the Rodney King riots in 1992?

Los Angeles denizens aren’t the only ones concerned about outbreaks of rage and despair expressed in fires and bricks through windows. Breitbart reports that two-thirds of Italians fear riots and social unrest growing out of the Wuhan virus economic downturn:

The alarming figures were published in a poll conducted by Euromedia Research this week, and claimed that 65 per cent of Italians feared that the country, especially in the north which has been the hardest hit region by the Chinese virus, could see social tensions and rioting in the country’s industrial heartlands.

Alessandra Ghisleri, director of Euromedia Research, commented on the results saying, “After a hundred days of lockdown, Italians are beginning to be afraid: seven out of ten fear that the economic crisis will detonate social uprisings, especially in the North. Only five out of a hundred say they still have faith in politicians,” Il Giornale reports.

“The real issue is that confidence in Italian politicians today is at 4.6 per cent,” Ghisleri said and referenced the “Vaffanculo-Days” (“F**k-off Days”) that were organised by Five Star Movement founder Beppe Grillo in 2007 the last time Italian confidence in politicians was recorded as so low.

Some conservatives have speculated that Dems want to keep the economy shut down to some extent until the election in November, in order to ensure President Trump’s defeat. But their strategy could backfire–particularly if riots erupt in metropolises. Even the most oblivious observer will suss out that riots fall under the responsibility of local big-city politicians and state governors, not Washington.

If the past is any guide, unrest in LA will follow the racialization of the lockdown. Once demogogues find their way to framing the pain of minority communities as deliberate and targeted injustice, matters could get heated. All that’s needed at that time is a spark.